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Radio 2 Comedy Greats: Benny Hill: The Untold Story

Benny Hill: The Untold Story

06/10/2009

BBC Radio 2 - Radio 2 Comedy Greats, Benny Hill: The Untold Story

Ben Miller pays tribute to one of the most successful British comics of the 20th Century.

Ben Miller looks at the career of Benny Hill, who counted Charlie Chaplin amongst his fans and was one of the few British comics to make it big in America.

Ben Miller investigates Benny Hill: The Untold Story as we delve beyond his TV shows, to look at some of the ground-breaking and innovative comedy techniques used by the comic in his very early years.

Benny Hill is most famous for being chased by scantily-clad young women at the end of his TV shows but there's much more to the Benny Hill story than that. When the comic visited Charlie Chaplin's house in the 1980s, he was shocked to find shelves full of Benny Hill videos, and was told by his guide that Chaplin rated him as "the best".

He was the first British comic to be made by TV rather than radio, shooting to fame with the Benny Hill Show on BBC Television in 1965. Much of his work was about the use of visual comedy rather than words. He was totally obsessed by his craft, to the exclusion of all else, and he pushed the boundaries of comedy technically and structurally. Ben Miller explores his comedy further, with the help of producer/director Harold Snoad and Don Taffner, the US TV mogul who introduced Benny to US audiences.

And there was more to Benny than comedy. He also played the straight man admirably, starring in legendary films such as Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and The Italian Job, and he scored the Christmas number one in 1971 with Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West).

At their peak, his TV shows were attracting in excess of 16 million viewers. They were shown in more than 140 different countries and he was one of the few British comics to make it big in America. But this programme also covers Hill's fall from favour, as tastes changed and his show was axed.

Contributers include former Benny Hill Show child star Joanna Kirkland, US TV Executive Don Taffner (the man who launched Benny in America), Michael Grade, Tom O'Connor, Nicholas Parsons, Bella Emberg, Coronation Street star Betty Driver, Tony Blackburn, and Radio 2's Stuart Maconie.

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